Category Archives: Conversion Optimization

If you’re getting traffic, but just not converting it can be maddening. You might be looking at your copy, your stock photos, your offers, who you’re targeting—and these are all great things to look at. But you might be glossing over one tiny (yet MONUMENTALLY IMPORTANT) detail… your call to action!

Here are some common call to action mistakes… and how to avoid them.

You’re Being Too Vague… and Kind of Bossy

No one likes being told what to do—especially without a good reason to do it.

“Submit” and “Click here” are vague and boring and quite frankly, sound a little controlling. Your customers have no idea why they should click there or submit their information. It’s important that your CTA quickly conveys what you want the customer to do… and why they should want to.

Instead of using really vague terms, try something more specific. If you want people to sign up for your newsletter your button might say “Sign Up For Updates.” Still a little dull, but much more descriptive. Of course you can add value by offering a discount for new subscribers and change the button to say “Sign Up and Take 20% Off.”

Bottom line, if you’re going to tell someone to do something, give them a good reason.

There’s No Sense of Urgency

Incentives are great, but they might not feel like a big deal if they’re always an option. If every time you visit a site you know you could get 10% off, you might not bother to sign up for the newsletter immediately.

But if there was a limited offer that said “20% TODAY ONLY” then might make you think twice, right?

By the way, you could easily create this sense of urgency with Digioh. In the above example, you could display a lightbox with the “10% off” discount the first few times a customer visits. Then, after their second or third visit you could display the “20% OFF TODAY ONLY.”

Your CTA is Hard to Find

When everything is bolded… nothing is.

You’ve seen this before… a landing page full of bolded text, bright colors, multiple CTAs and just waaaaaaaaaay too much going on. It takes forever to actually find the call to action. You probably couldn’t hit that back button fast enough.

Or… you’ve designed this page and it looks great to you and you can spot that CTA right away! That’s because… you know where it is. Show some friends and time them. See how long it takes.

Your CTA Blends In Too Much

It can feel a little awkward to design a site around an very specific look, with carefully selected colors and fonts only to throw it all out the window.

But that’s exactly what you have to do if you want your CTA to stand out. If it looks exactly like every other design element it becomes camouflaged. Placing your CTA over a button that’s a different color or font weight will make it pop.

Your CTAs Compete with Each Other

Don’t make your users choose between two CTAs, even if there are two logical choices. Obviously a “Sign Up” call to action is important to a new user, but might be irrelevant to an existing user. So while it makes logical sense to include a “Log In” button right next to the sign up button, it’s likely hurting your conversion rates.

Instead, keep the login button nearby, but downplay it a bit.

You Only Use a CTA on Landing Pages

Okay, so let’s assume your landing pages are actually perfect. That’s great! But do you only interact with your customers via landing page?

Every social media post, email newsletter sent, and post on your blog is an opportunity to get a new lead. Make sure you’re using those opportunities to your advantage.

Your CTA Doesn’t Align with Your Goals

Your CTA should always point to your top priority. You might have a lot of smaller goals as well, like growing your social media following and getting more engagement on your blog. But keep your eyes on the prize.

That means, don’t end your blog posts with a CTA that encourages comments when you could encourage a lead!

Don’t:
“Did you enjoy this blog post? Leave a comment!”

Do:
“Need advice? Get a free consultation.”

You’re All Talk and No Show

If you’re using words like “best” or “biggest” your customers might raise an eyebrow. According to who exactly?

So many of us become jaded and skeptical of advertising claims. The worst thing you could do is sound like a phoney salesman.

Anyone could say “Sign up to get updates from the biggest NYC food blog” but that’s meaningless without numbers. Instead say “Join our list of over 100k subscribers.”

Similarly, if you’ve won awards or have been featured by a reputable publisher, include that information in your pitch.

You’re Putting Your CTA in the Wrong Place

Best practices have always dictated that your CTA should be above the fold (before users scroll) because… no one ever scrolls down on a page.

You might think there’s no harm in including the CTA above the fold “just in case” but the more a user scrolls to read your landing page, the further they get from that CTA. At that point, it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind.

A creative solution might be to use Digioh to show a lightbox with your CTA to anyone who scrolls too far in either direction.

You’re Not Testing Your CTAs

Even if you learn and follow all of the rules… there’s no guarantees. Best practices are generalizations. Reading tips like these can help you start off with a stronger CTA, but ultimately you’re going to want to keep refining.

Your gut might tell you that an orange “Add to Cart” button will lead the most sales and be totally shocked when a green “Buy Now” button performs 20% better. (True story.)

Sometimes seemingly tiny changes can lead to a huge jump in conversions. For example ADT changed the text on their call to action from “Book a Free Survey” to “Get a Free Quote” and saw a 62% increase in conversions. Arguably those two phrases mean roughly the same thing, but they have a very different impact on users.

You’re Not Optimized for Mobile

Your CTA might look amazing on desktop browsing, but have you checked it out in mobile?

Is your call the action easily clickable on mobile?
Do you have to pinch and zoom in to click?
Is your text still legible?
Is the formatting messed up?

Mobile usage is always on the rise so a clunky call to action could really kill your conversions. Even if you’ve perfected your desktop CTAs, you need a whole new version for mobile.

By now you have a ton of knowledge on how to fix some of these issues and create more effective CTAs. If you need more CTA, we can help! Digioh makes designing forms and buttons super easy that you can embed or display in a lightbox. We also make mobile optimization and targeting extremely simple. And if that’s not enough, we work extremely closely with all of our customers to develop an effective CTA strategy.

Hey all! We’ve developed and implemented some fantastic new tools for your conversion needs. Much of it will help you get a head-start on some upcoming changes with Google’s algorithms, but even if that weren’t happening there are still plenty of powerful updates to Digioh that we think you’ll be excited about.

Google Is Changing Their Mobile Algorithm—We’ve Got You Covered!

First up: some news! Google is adjusting its algorithms. However, keep in mind: this only applies to pages accessed on a mobile device (i.e. on a tablet or a phone). The ranking of mobile sites is now affected by an additional criteria: the degree to which a popup obscures page content or distracts readers. This means that full-screen popups or large ones that scroll with the reader can negatively affect your search rank. While Google won’t delist a site for such popups, it is still damaging. Lightboxes fall under Google’s definition of “popup,” so traditional uses—like full-screen coverage for subscription popups—will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Google has put out a diagram showing what will be affected by their new rules and what won’t:

As you can see, things like traditional Lightbox popups can affect ranking, as can fullscreen popups. On the other hand, popups for security reasons (like cookie authorization and age verification) and banner-style popups won’t affect ranking.

The option highlighted in red is what we’re going for here with our latest feature: the Banner Widget Here at Digioh, we knew these changes were coming so we developed the Banner Widget, a tool that will help you optimize your mobile-accessed site without getting deranked on Google. (Note that Google is the only traffic source that this is a necessity for, but you can still set it up for other sources (like Facebook) if you’d like!)

Introducing the Banner Widget

The Banner Widget is essentially a mobile Lightbox designed to work well with mobile SEO algorithms. Like other lightboxes, you can use it with any number of functions and you can design it in almost any way you want! (The basic feel of the Banner WIdget is akin to the app download boxes that show up on some sites. Unobtrusive, simple, and effective.)

Another similarity with the standard Lightbox is the ease of setup. Let’s go through a quick example.

Starting a New Banner

First things first: sign in to your Digioh account. If you don’t yet have one, you can sign up for a free trial account to get a feel it, or you can drop us a line and we’ll be happy to take you through a quick, personalized demo.

Once you’ve logged in, hit the “New” option.

The next page will have several different Lightbox options. Select the “Banner” option; this will narrow your options down to templates for Banner Widgets.

For this example, we’ll choose the basic red-on-white template:

Exploring Features

Now that we’ve selected a template, there are a good number of features you can use to make the most of it: color, design, text, forms, etc. Below, you can see the options that are set for the example widget that control its various features. This one controls the text for the button:

And this one controls the text in the box:

The “Form” option also controls the email form. You can adjust it to work for nearly any form you need. to use.

Once you’ve got the design to your liking, there are a few other things you can do with it—all of which have been specially designed to help you get the best out of mobile visitors. You can find these by selecting the “Lightbox/SIdebar/Inline/Banner” option in the accordion list on the left.

Positioning on Page

The first option you’ll see is that of the positioning on the page. With this option, you can choose whether your widget will be on the top of the screen or the bottom of it.

Overlap Options

This option determines whether your widget will displace page content or will be overlaid on it. Think of this as a traditional banner ad versus a popup. One is inline with the text and the other is on top of it. Neither is wrong; your purposes will help you determine which works best for you (but do note that, depending on your site’s design, if you have set positioning to “top,” it could block header menus, and if you have positioned it at the bottom, it could obscure footer info).

Stickiness of Widget

Stickiness will be important to consider, as each option has its own advantage and disadvantage.

In a fixed position, the banner will disappear as the user scrolls through the page (just like the rest of the page content). This is very inconspicuous but at the cost of being in front of your users at all times. When the option of “scrolls” is selected, however, the banner will remain where it is on the display as the user continues downward—keeping it in front of the users at the cost of covering part of the screen. We recommend using a fixed position, but depending on your needs the scrolling option may work better for you.

Additional Pages

We have found that many people use multiple Lightboxes together to accomplish their purposes (e.g. once a user submits their information, a thank-you page pops up), and we’ve made things much easier from here on out. We’re super excited to share the option to set up multiple pages in a single Lightbox now! A good visual example for our current banner is this:

This is a “second page,” so to say, of the same widget that pops up upon the user submitting their email through it. Setting this (or any other extra page you may want) is quick and easy, working just like the main page. To get it set up, though, you first need to change the button’s action appropriately.

As you can see, there is an option to open another Lightbox, but there is also an option to show a thank-you page or to show up to four other pages. This can be used to open a help page or anything else you need, and it’s all in one central place!

Additional Device-targeting Options

Another new feature we have is the ability to target by more types of devices! If you are on the Lightbox home-screen, you can select the “Edit” option to the right of the Lightbox title; if you are in the design area, hit the Conditions tab in the accordion list and then click “Edit Conditions.”

The first thing that will pop up is the option to target by one of three different devices: a phone, a tablet, or a desktop.

With this, you can set specific Lightboxes and banners for specific devices down to even showing different options for tablet users!

Targeting a Combination of Devices

You may find that you would like to target a combination of devices instead of just one. To do this, you would select one of the targeted devices (as done above), then select “Add New Rule.”

Now open the dropdown, and select “Device Type.”

Now you just select the additional device you want to target from the dropdown!

BrowserStack.com

One of the best things about the Digioh system is that you can preview your widgets and Lightboxes directly in the editor, but sometimes you want to see it on a real device. What we use when we test for our own site is BrowserStack.com.

They have multiple device options we use to test things out, and the options with the device icon next to them are real devices, not emulators, so we get the full picture no matter what. You can get a free trial with them if you want to test things out yourself. We highly recommend them.

Let’s Get You Set Up!

So let’s get going! Go ahead and try out Digioh for your site (remember, it’s free to try!) and see just how much it can help you increase conversions. If you want some help or guidance or simply want some stuff worked on for you, just send us a message and we’ll be more than happy to help out. We take pride in our customer service, and we know you won’t be disappointed; only the best for you!

This week’s how-to—effectively repurposing your exit-intent strategy—is absolutely fantastic for e-commerce sites (and frankly one of my favorites from a consumer standpoint). All the major e-commerce providers (like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento) use it with great success, and if you’re a smaller business or have a custom-built site, it will work great for that as well.

What It Means to Repurpose an Offer

So then what does it mean to repurpose an offer? It’s not nearly as complicated as it may sound. There are no tedious tasks to take care of, no complex coding to complete, and no profound plans to perform. Instead of going through all the work of designing a new offer or completely reworking your entire strategy, you can dramatically increase your conversion rate by stating the same offer in a different way upon exit intent.

A poorly-executed offer Lightbox—such as this one that is effectively a carbon copy of the in-page offer—won’t convert as well.

The offer needs to be written in such a way that it seems like an even better one than what was offered in-page. An example of this is to list a savings in percentage in the exit-intent offer that is equivalent to the offer on the page.

What Is Exit Intent?

That’s fine and dandy, but for those out of the know, what exactly is exit intent? Well, when a visitor to your site decides to leave the page they’re on (or your site in general), it could be for a variety of reasons; this is exit intent (pretty much self-explanatory).

Visitors are more likely to jump on the offer you present to them when it’s worded in another way that seems novel to them.

Regardless of the reason a visitor may have to leave, that action can quickly lose you a potential lead. By repurposing your offer to specifically target a new visitor with intent to exit, you get a chance now to not only earn a customer but to also grab their email.

Effectively Repurpose by Using an Email Drip Sequence

There’s an art to email marketing. Everyone with experience with it knows that. With the exit-intent Lightbox, this art is mastered for the greatest effectiveness. The emails most likely to be read are those that are received immediately after providing an email address, so with the exit-intent offer we’ll send an email instantly.

It’s important not to bombard a potential lead, but it’s also good to be aware of how easily people can forget things or misplace them. Sending a follow-up email 24 hours after the first one is the perfect sweet spot here, and then as a benefit of the doubt let’s send one last email reminder seven days later.

The teaser follow is a great tool to combine with an exit-intent offer.

An easy-to-set-up tool that you can effectively combine with this email drip sequence is the teaser follow. With it, a visitor can easily access the exit-intent offer again in the event that they accidentally close it out or decide later that they still want to take advantage of it, leading to an average increase of .5%-1%! We covered this in last week’s how-to, so if you missed it go ahead and check it out here!

How to Set Up Your Exit-intent Offer

Getting your exit-intent offer set up is super easy. There are only a few steps, so let’s go over them so you can get to getting more leads!

Step 1: Initial Navigation

Log in to your Digioh account. If you weren’t automatically dropped at the “Lightboxes” tab then go ahead and click it, then select the Lightbox you intend to edit.

Step 2: Setting up Your Conditions

Next, hit the “Conditions” tab, then click “Edit Conditions.”

Click on “Add New Rule.”

Select “Exit Intent” from the drop-down list.

Now click on the left drop-down (to the right of “Exit Intent”) and select “Any of these events occur.” Following that, click the little plus in the box and go ahead and add the other three options from the list, one by one.

And you’re set up! Whenever a visitor goes to leave your site now, they will see your exit-intent offer pop up.

Let’s say now that you only want this offer to be shown on a specific page of your site. All you need to do is add one more rule to your Lightbox.

The new rule is titled “Current Page URL”:

And now that you’ve added that, go ahead and put in the directory of the page you want the exit-intent offer to appear on. For this example, we’ve used a generic “products” section of the site:

Web Source Referrals

And if you want to target visitors coming in from specific sites or referrers, you can do that with this rule:

Which brings up these options:

You also have the options to target visitors from different search engines, from specific URLs, or from any number of other sources, among other customizations.

And with that, we wrap up this week’s how-to. Have you had success with exit-intent offers? Let us know in the comments! And if you think this would be great for your business, go ahead and give Digioh a try! You can give it a test run for free. Till next week!

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